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Eddie Cantrell
Lieutenant-Commander Edward "Eddie" Cantrell was one of four teens (affectionately called the "Four Musketeers" by Mike Stearns) who'd been visiting Grantville during when the Ring of Fire transferred the town into the past. The Ring of Fire (1631-32) Cantrell was friends with Jeff Higgins, Larry Wild, and Jimmy Andersen. Cantrell and Anderson were residents of the neighboring town of Barrackville. The Wild and Higgins families had been gone for the day when the Ring of Fire took place. The four boys had been together to play "Dungeons & Dragons". After Grantville was shunted into the past, the four found themselves effectively orphaned. Battle of the Crapper Cantrell made some in-roads in the nascient Grantville millitary by helping to rescue the Richter family at the end of the Battle of the Crapper in the summer of 1631. Initially, the four boys acted as couriers. Collecting arms with (and from) the Vietnam war veteran and recluse Poul Santee in the period shortly after the RoF (summer of '31) is recorded in the short story "Curio and Relic" by Tom van Natta. Joining the Navy In the winter '32-'33, Cantrell successfully convinced Mike Stearns that an ironclad navy was needed to help Gustavus Adolphus fight the Thirty Years' War effectively. Thrust into working for John Chandler Simpson, who'd originally opposed Mike Stearns and his policies, Eddie's unique character helped to soften Simpson. Also that year, Eddie was involved in a gun fight with down-timers stealing firearms from the chaotic environs of Grantville. The Baltic War and Captivity In 1633, Lt. Cantrell headed up the mixed forces charged with defending Wismar Bay from the invading League of Ostend forces. During the battle, he was injured and captured by the Danish, though he was initially believed to have died. As a prisoner of war in Denmark, he succumbed to youthful folly and raging hormones, and fell in love with Christian IV's daughter from his morganatic second marriage, Anne Cathrine. As a teenager, he had had a brief interest in oceanography, but could remember very little of what he'd read about diving other than the hazard of "the bends" and that diving suits were generally dangerous, especially if the pump stopped or the air hose ruptured. He had been able to convey enough of this to Baldur Norddahl to convince Baldur that he would not get into one. After Christian learned that Eddie had fabricated the information he had been giving, he had Eddie confined in the Blue Tower of Copenhagen Castle, but did not prevent Anne Cathrine from visiting him. This turned out to be fortunate, as she was able to help him get out of the tower before John Simpson demolished it as an object lesson to Christian. After Captivity In July of 1634, during the "Bavarian Crisis", Eddie and Tom Simpson devised a plan to move the large guns salvaged from the [[SSIM Monitor|SSIM Monitor]] overland to Munich. This turned out to be much easier said than done. By October, when the crisis was essentially over, they had only gotten as far as Swabia. Sometime between the end of his involvement in that project, and April of 1635, Eddie and Anne Cathrine were married. Also, in April 1635, his wooden peg-leg was replaced with a custom-made resin-and-figerglass based prosthetic.Advance snippets for 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies Commander Cantrell - along with elements of the Danish, Dutch and USE Navies - began engaging Spanish Forces in the New World in the hopes of acquiring oil. References Category:1632 Characters Category:Americans Category:Sailors